15 January 2008 10:17 AM

Whatever happened to news? And what is news anyway?

The revival of 'News at Ten' is unlikely to persuade me to get back in front of the TV screen.

In the last couple of years, television news has become so feeble and peculiar that I find it very hard to bear.

Until recently, apart from 'University Challenge', the news was about the only thing I could bring myself to watch on TV any more. But the BBC late evening news programme, which I used to make sure I saw every night, has become almost intolerable for anyone who has any idea how the world actually works.

Absurd, over-emotional reports about horrors abroad, randomly selected, conformist conventional wisdom about politics at home, ridiculous backdrops for 'live' reports which the reporter could equally well have delivered in the studio; open-mouthed 'Security' stories which accept the MI5 or police version of events without reservation and serve to create an air of irrational fear, in which our liberties can more easily be stolen, sentimental piffle from the Middle East in which the Israel-Arab conflict is never, ever explained.

I often suspect that the reporters involved don't understand the Middle East or know its basic history, even though they are standing with Jerusalem floodlit behind them.

There are occasional exceptions, but in general it's like this, and it's a struggle to keep watching.

At least the BBC Radio 4 news bulletins and programmes are immune from some of these problems.

Radio's political reporters aren't required to stand in front of 10 Downing Street, a building they're rarely allowed to enter and certainly can't roam around inside, and there's less emoting because it tends to sound sillier on radio than on TV.

They also allow a little more time, and their presenters are often (not always) people who have knocked about a bit and know more or less what they are talking about, and thus not cool enough to be on TV. Not that this always makes much difference. Let's not go onto the shared assumptions of reporters and presenters which work against any serious understanding of what's going on.

Yet once, especially in the late 1970s and the 1980s, I couldn't go to bed until I had seen two, and sometimes three TV news programmes. It wasn't just because of the pure delight involved in watching Reginald Bosanquet and Anna Ford.

In the days of the Thatcher government and the Cold War we had, it seemed to me, quite a lot of real news - actual events that justified the big headline and the long TV news reports.

Now, we tend to have items magnified out of all proportion, emphasised to suit a particular view of what is important or fashionable, but often profoundly unimportant.

Take for example the story in many papers this week about how some photographer specialising in lookalikes cannot find anyone who looks like the 'bovine' Gordon Brown.

Actually Gordon Brown doesn't look specially bovine, not least because he's so obviously an intelligent man, and his facial features are of course influenced by the fact that he is half-blind as the result of a sports injury and an unsuccessful operation in his boyhood (which nearly left him wholly blind).

So how come it is all right to say he is 'bovine' and - by implication - so uniquely ugly that there's nobody in the country who looks like him?

Why, because the current fashionable 'story' is that Gordon Brown is a disastrous failure, and even looks horrid, unlike that nice David Cameron. I yield to nobody in my dislike for Gordon Brown's politics. But this is just silly.

And that brings me to the question of what 'news' is. There are several respectable definitions.

My favourite is "Something someone, somewhere doesn't want you to read". Then there's the simplest of all, "something shocking, out of the ordinary, a reversal of the normal way in which things happen".

But one of the reasons why news is now getting harder to find is that we have, as a nation (and as a world) been through a profound shock in which almost everything that was abnormal is now normal.

Newspapers and TV bulletins now ignore, night and day, thousands of stories which 25 years ago would have led their bulletins or been splayed across their front pages.

And the time when I watched three news bulletins a night (and then hungrily tore through a great bundle of newspapers at breakfast the following day) was a revolutionary period in which there was more news of that kind than the papers or the bulletins had room for.

We saw it all go roaring by, and often did not realise what it meant.

Now it's over, we merely record the aftermath of that revolution, its slow, relentless consolidation in the form of political correctness allied with globalism and a loopy consumerism mainly concerned with high-heeled shoes, celebrities and electronic devices.

Will this current dull, conformist phase last? Are we just numb at seeing national boundaries overwhelmed, Communist and capitalist dining together, common sense dethroned in the home, the classroom and the street, vacuousness rewarded with fame and money, talent bullied into the background or dispensed with altogether?

Will we eventually realise that we are at the receiving end of one huge news story - that the people of the free and advanced countries have lost much of their liberty and their safety following our apparent victory in the Cold War, that we are in many important ways growing poorer while appearing to be richer, that family life and personal freedom are almost at an end, that parliamentary democracy has ceased to operate?

Increasingly, I fear not, for the other great development of modern times, very much reflected in much of what nowadays passes for news, is that we have for the most part lost any key to the past.

We don't know what happened before, or we simply refuse to believe it when we are told, and we have very few ways of finding out.

So we don't have anything with which to compare our current plight and so come to sensible conclusions about how much we have lost, and how much we have gained. Often we can't believe our own memories, and imagine them to be quirky individual things rather than a key to general change.

In my own lifetime I can recall several things that now seem impossible (I don't say I want all of them back, before I am accused of doing so, or told I am against central heating. I just find it harder and harder to believe I experienced them in person) - currency limits when you went abroad, with the amount you'd drawn having to be entered in your (British) passport, shoplifters having their trials reported in the papers, teachers wearing gowns and mortarboards, riding in the front seats of cars without a seatbelt, Town Clerks, metal dustbins that took a whole week's rubbish, TV sets that took a minute to warm up, coalmen, AA motorbike patrols, bus conductors in peaked caps, sweets sold loose from jars, mudlarks diving for worn copper pennies in the mud of Portsmouth harbour, Mild ale, pubs shutting in the afternoons, grocer's shops with counters, early closing days, carol singers who actually knew some carols, 56-pound sacks, standing for the National Anthem in cinemas, cattle markets, the great phalanx of bicycles at Rowntree's factory gate in York as the workers waited for the hooter so that they could ride home after work, the Berlin Wall, and the Border troops with sub-machine guns who stood in the girders at Friedrichstrasse station; crossing the Channel by boat, passport control at the border between France and Germany, boarding an aeroplane without being scanned and searched, cyclists observing red traffic lights, servicemen in uniform a regular sight on the streets; eating fish and chips out of newspaper, or sandwiches not enclosed in plastic armour, people smoking during TV chat shows, huge crowds waiting for the appearance of minor royalty, pirate radio stations, dockers, steam trains on regular service, often with carriages for 'ladies only', being able to see the Milky Way.

And these are all just superficial changes, which express for us the other deeper changes in morals and language and the shape of civilisation.

I feel more and more like the old geezer in the pub in 1984 trying to order a pint of beer from a barman who's never heard of anything but litres, or like George Bowling, in 'Coming up for Air' remembering with astonishment a rather recent childhood - both books by George Orwell, of course, and linked by much more than the burying of the past.

Hello Peter thanks for the memories although they made me sad. Here's a couple more. Waking up to the wonderful gentle sound of rattling milk bottles that grew louder as the milkman came closer to our house(except Sundays of course)and the ring of bell on the black wolsey police cars as they responded with urgency to any member of the public who needed help.
Is there a way back? I hope so for all our sakes

Yes, agree with you there about the news and I do pick things out such as the over-emphasis on certain opinions. Ceefax is also riddled with PC. I'm guessing that after the Cold War finished, may of us mistakenly though "We can totally relax now, there's no danger in the world". Wrong. Yes, it was indeed a good thing that the Cold War finished and the nineties was, dare I say it, a relatively peaceful time for the world in some aspects, but you should never totally take your eye off the ball. I do agree that the news has become very sensationalist, and obsessed with the trivial. I will highlight that in the eighties, electronic devices and high-heeled shoes (both a good thing though on the latter I wish some ladies walk properly!) were big then though the difference between the eighties and now is that people did have a sense of prospective then. I also remember when towns of 40,000 people virtually closed down on Sundays and this was just about twenty years ago. A few of those things on your list Peter I remember, and I'm not even thirty.
And regarding a contribution on this thread about Kate Silverton's dress at the Oscars. It was a nice dress, but lets get our news priorties right.

One of my favourite films – which regrettably, has not been screened for some time – is François Truffaut’s adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s short novel ‘Fahrenheit 451’. Come to think of it, Orwell’s ‘1984’ is not that long a read either.
In the film, the main protagonist Guy Montag, is played by Oskar Werner, while Julie Christie plays both his wife Linda (Millie in the book) and Clarisse, a young girl he meets on a train and strikes up a friendship with.

Here is a short excerpt, from Truffaut’s and Jean-Louis Richard’s Screenplay, of the dialogue between Montag (he is habitually called by his surname, indicative of the subservient sublimation of his individual identity) and Clarisse when they first meet.

Clarisse: I'd like to ask you something else, only I don't really dare.

Montag: Go ahead.

Clarisse: Is it true...that a long time ago...firemen used to put out fires and not burn books?

Montag: Really, your uncle is right. You are light in the head. "Put fires out"? Who told you that?

Clarisse: I don't know. Someone. But is it true?

Montag: What a strange idea. – Houses have always been fireproof.

Clarisse: Ours isn't.

Montag: Well, then, it should be condemned one of these days. It has to be destroyed, and you will have to move...to a house that is fireproof.

Clarisse: Too bad. Tell me, why do you burn books?

Montag: What? Well, it's a job like any other. Good work with lots of variety. Monday, we burn Miller; Tuesday, Tolstoy; Wednesday, Walt Whitman; Friday, Faulkner; and Saturday and Sunday, Schopenhauer and Sartre. "We burn them to ashes and then burn the ashes." That's our official motto.

Clarisse: You don't like books then?

Montag: Do you like the rain?

Clarisse: Yes, I adore it.

Montag: Books are just so much... rubbish. They have no interest.

Clarisse: Then why do some people still read them although it's so dangerous?

Montag: Precisely because it is forbidden.

Clarisse: Why is it forbidden?

Montag: Because it makes people unhappy.

Clarisse: Do you really believe that?

Montag: Oh, yes. Books disturb people. They make them antisocial.

Clarisse: Do you think I'm antisocial?

Montag: Why do you ask?

Clarisse: Well...I'm a teacher. Well, not quite. I'm still on probation. This afternoon the analyst called me in, And I don't think I said the right things. I'm not at all happy about my answers. That's probably why I've been so rude to you. Have I been annoying you?

Montag: Oh, no, not at all. In fact, I was questioned this afternoon as well. I didn't do too well either. This is where I live. You see? This is my house.

With the naivety of youth, when I first saw ‘Fahrenheit 451’ in 1970, I regarded it merely as imaginative entertainment. Never in my wildest dreams did I realise I would live to see the day of its visitation, here in Britain.

The trivalisation of News programming is an inevitable by-product of the fragmentation and dumbing-down of this country's social,moral,political and artistic culture,which began under Thatcherism and has continued with greater excess under New Labour.Lady T appearance at the PM's recent housewarming confirms such interchangeability.
Current affairs producers now seem more interested in technical slickness and presentation than real depth or profudity.I am for instance not in the slightest bit interested in the troubled lives of overpaid,self-abusing,self conceited pop stars (Britney Spears,Amy Winehouse).Such stories are acceptable fodder in downmarket tabloids and lampooning websites,but not supposedly highbrow news bulletins.But 'highbrow' is rapidly becoming an hilariously contradictory term for TV and media as a whole in the 21st century.The only TV programme personally
that has really had the desired impact of admiration in recent years was LIFE ON MARS.Thoughful,witty,satirical,nostalgic and very well made,produced and acted,the fact that it transported a 21st century policeman back into the far less politically correct 1970's ( an era which itself was no bed of roses) perhaps struck a chord with TV viewers who themselves wanted to be reunited with a period,which,by no means perfect,was far less consumerist/materialist,not dehumanised by excessive technological advances,had traditional,decent working class communities,and rewarded and appreciated various talented individuals who entertained,amused or interested us on our TV screens.Where are the potential successors to Morecambe and Wise,Tommy Cooper or Two Ronnies now? Overrated comic performers like Russell Brand,Ricky Gervais and Catherine Tate are in no way all-round family comics and never will be.If those in power in TV land try hard enough,there is surely still room for great dramas,sit-coms and documentaries that have general appeal,instead of the downmarket reality shows and interminable soaps that dominate 75%+ of peaktime schedules.I can remember a time when CORONATION ST was broadcast merely twice a week.Now at five times per week,it is inevitable that with less time being spent writing and producing each programme,quality is suffering,which goes for all the other soaps.My intense dislike of reality programmes (and the 'celebrities' that emerge therin) has been documented before with other messages sent to Peter,but it is concerning that this is seeping in to news programmes,and indeed those that present them.Appearances on such shows as Strictly Come Dancing and Children in Need are,with the odd exception,usually a witless embarrassment and wholly unneccessary.This of course regularly happened on many comedy shows of the 1970's such as THE GOODIES and MORECAMBE AND WISE.But at least when Angela Rippon,Richard Baker,Robert Dougall,et al featured on such programmes,they had the benefit of working with talented individuals,performers and scriptwriters who worked out scenes around them who understood and worked within their strengths and used them to an advantage,and usually did not expose them to ridicule.We now see many news and current affairs presenters performing in roles that they are horribly unsuited for;whereas those of us old enough pleasantly remember Angela Rippon more than holding her own in a dancing routine with Eric and Ernie,we recoil in horror,for example,when observing GMTV presenters Kate Garroway and Penny Smith hopelessly dismal attempts at dance and song respectively.How they managed to stay on the various reality programmes involved by phone vote is a mystery,but this leads on to another relevant point;the TV companies know that they will earn huge incomes from the millions of braindead that ring in to vote on these most trifling of shows,so the lure of monetary gain rather than actual quality is now looked on as the more important aspect.The recent exposures and concerns of fraudulent practices from these poorly regulated phone lines has been mostly put to one side;this disgraceful scam is likely to go on unchecked.
I do agree with Peter that many stories that should be featured are being pushed out because of emphasis on said hybrids like pop stars,pointless and verbose 'live' accounts from surprisingly inarticulate reporters,and overtly flashly and vapid visual presentation of stories inflated beyond their importance.I am concerned for example,at the flippancy that Middle-Eastern/Gulf War stories are treated (Israel,Afganistan,Iraq,etc.),especially when British soldiers deaths are announced in this region,usually mentioned three quarters the way through for about 20 seconds or so.It is the case now,however, that bullying (perhaps racist,perhaps not racist) from a grossly inarticulate harridan towards an attractive,sophisticated,multi-lingual Indian actress on a pathetically over-hyped 'reality' TV show is regarded as far more important.I think it's also important that we should complain that a mildly popular TV actress (Leslie Ash) was awarded a titanically extortionate amount of money (£5 million) after she caught the MRSA bug in hospital during an operation.I do agree that compensation was justified,but not on this scale.What about those others in Ms Ash's position,who's only offence is not being famous,that are still struggling for renumeration,perhaps 50 times less than what she received? And those families of those servicemen killed and severely injured in Iraq and Afganistan,who are being ignored and hampered in their attempts for monetary compensation? These kind of worthy stories are barely noticeable in today's TV media,being more interested in mundane soundbites and PR fluff from Brown,Cameron,etc. and how Ms Spears and Ms Winehouse are coping in Rehab.
I think those courageous servicemen under the most horrific of conditions are more worthy patients in these glorified hotels for the opulent and tawdry than for fatuously self-indulgent egomaniacs.

Peter, you present yet another series of valid points. I agree with you wholeheartedly on most of the issues you raise. Unfortunately in modern Britain I feel increasingly isolated in holding my traditional beliefs in such high regard.
You mention the low quality of relevant news reporting of recent years. I believe this is a situation that appears to be worsening year on year. Of all news channels i used to value the BBC. In the last ten years BBC news appears to have turned into an Orwellian "newspeak" channel presenting, in the main, the views of the present Government without question. Such an example is the promotion of the myth of man made climate change.
Another thing I have noticed with the BBC's reporting of late is the tendency of the reporters to either overlook important issues or trivialise them in favour of some vacuous celebrity scoop. Whether or not this could be seen as some part of a more sinister agenda remains to be seen. Yet only today on BBC1's lunchtime news (24-1-08) their political editor, stood in front of 10 Downing Street made a comment about things looking difficult for Mr Brown since "We elected him to serve last year". I wonder if that outrageous misrepresentation of the truth will be repeated again? I think not.
I have always had faith in the system being able to right itself with time. However, with a present British political system (and indeed Western politics as a whole) seeming to live off misrepresentation and outright lies, my faith of seeing something better has never been as shaken.

Guy, with respect, what on earth are you talking about? Have you actually read what I wrote? By what bizarre process have you drawn the conclusion that I think you using your full name relates to you dodging the issue? I simply say you have dodged the issue because you have never dealt with the actual argument, which, I repeat for the umpteenth time, was about the method of solving the problem, ie prison/heroin clinics etc. That was what Peter's blog postings were about. It was you who made the name thing an issue by saying that you wouldn't respond further to someone who doesn't use their full name (well done on sticking to that, by the way), and in your post you used that as a way of not engaging with the argument, because of course someone who doesn't use their surname "could be anyone", as if that is in any way important to the debate. Perhaps I'm in a minority on this but I personally don't care whether you use your full name or not. It is of no importance to me whatsoever - call yourself Susan if you want.

I only care what you say and whether sensible, rational debate can be had. You dodge the issue, as do others, by repeatedly parrotting that "drug users choose drugs" as the be-all and end-all of the argument. I have readily agreed with this on several occasions which you would know if you bothered to read my statements properly. Is it possible to for you to move beyond this tedious repitition and on to the actual issue? I somehow doubt it, since you didn't when it mattered (and I regret having to waste space in this comments section on it): "As for drugs, I am not even vaguely open-minded on he subject - they stink!" Wow. Tremendous stuff. The rest of us may as well give up when someone so obviously already has the answer. Incidentally I don't doubt the strength of your feelings, just your ability to listen.

Stevie B - I am not so much engaged in what I say - I believe passionately, absolutely feel, every bloody word - what kind of warped logic is it that assumes that by using my full name I am dodging the issue?

I couldn't be more clear than very clear water in the world's clearest glass - people have the choice A/ take heroin B/ don't take heroin. The point about Orwell - why can you not see? He lived with the poorest of the poor in Paris and London in the 1930s - lived as a tramp - and there were no junkies, no drugs 'scene.' Probably some bourgeois jazznik idiots around somewhere else, but that is rather the point - decadence is a conscious choice.

Trevor McDonald, on a Sunday night programme where he was trying to be funny, made a tasteless joke about Tim Henman losing at Wimbledon to one of those concrete blocks that are used to combat terrorism.

An hour earlier, Tim Henman gave Great Britain a 2-0 lead over Croatia in the Davis Cup World Group play-off. With Andy Murray scheduled to play first on Sunday - and the doubles with brother Jamie on Saturday, there was a distinct possibility that Henman had played the last match of his career.

Of course, there was no coverage; there was time, however, for an item that featured NINE pieces to camera, five of them by David Sillito, about nothing in particular.

(Henman did win the doubles with the elder Murray next day - that was third item on Sportsday after the weekly rendition of "Football Managers Soundbites".)

'Now... This' was the title of the chapter dealing with the subject of television news, in the late Neil Postman's 1985 book 'Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business'.

Commenting on the above phrase Neil Postman remarked:

'The phrase... adds to our grammar a new part of speech, a conjunction that does not connect anything to anything but does the opposite: separates everything from everything. As such, it serves as a compact metaphor for the discontinuities in so much that passes for public discourse in present-day America.'

In reference to the (then not so distant) 'Iranian Hostage Crisis' of 1979-81, Postman writes:

'I don't suppose there has been a story in years that received more continuous attention from television.... [And in the light of which, I now] put these questions to you: Would it be an exaggeration to say that not one American in a hundred knows what language the Iranians speak? Or what the word “Ayatollah” means or implies? Or knows any details of the tenets of Iranian religious beliefs? Or the main outlines of their political history? Or knows who the Shah was, and where he came from?

'Nonetheless, everyone had an opinion about this event, for in America everyone is entitled to an opinion, and it is certainly useful to have a few when a pollster shows up. But these are opinions of a quite different order from eighteenth – or nineteenth-century opinions. It is probably more accurate to call them emotions rather than opinions, which would account for the fact that they change from week to week, as the pollsters tell us. What is happening here is that television is altering the meaning of “being informed” by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation.... Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information – misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information – information that creates the illusion of knowing something but which in fact leads one away from knowing.... [And therefore] we are losing our sense of what it means to be well informed. Ignorance is always correctable. But what shall we do if we take ignorance to be knowledge?'

At the time of writing 'Amusing Ourselves to Death' (which is his most well known book), Neil Postman (1931-2003) was Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences at New York University.

The following is from the blurb inside the front cover of the book that I possess:

'Television... [Neil Postman] agues, has taken the place of the printed word as the centre of our culture, and in so doing has trivialised the once serious and coherent discussion of all public affairs. Even our political and religious leaders today depend more on camera angles and showmanship than on reason and rhetoric....'

In the chapter entitled, 'The Typographic Mind', he writes:

'In a culture dominated by print, public discourse tends to be characterized by a coherent, orderly arrangement of facts and ideas.... In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, print put forward a definition of intelligence that gave priority to the objective, rational use of the mind and at the same time encouraged forms of public discourse with serious, logically ordered content. It is no accident that the Age of Reason was coexistent with the growth of a print culture, first in Europe and then in America....'

In the final chapter, entitled 'The Huxleyan Warning', Postman writes:

'What Huxley teaches is that in the age of advanced technology, spiritual devastation is more likely to come from an enemy with a smiling face than from one whose countenance exudes suspicion and hate. In the Huxleyan prophecy, Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice. We watch him, by ours. There is no need for warders or gates or Ministries of Truth. When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility....

'An Orwellian world is much easier to recognize, and to oppose, than a Huxleyan. Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us. We are not likely, for example, to be indifferent to the voices of the Sakharovs and the Timmermans and the Walesas. We take arms against such a sea of troubles, buttressed by the spirit of Milton, Bacon, Voltaire, Goethe and Jefferson. But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take [up] arms against a sea of amusements?'

In the above article Peter Hitchens writes:

'Will we eventually realise that we are at the receiving end of one huge news story - that [we are living in the aftermath of a revolution in which] the people of the free and advanced countries have lost much of their liberty and their safety following our apparent victory in the Cold War, that we are in many important ways growing poorer while appearing to be richer, that family life and personal freedom are almost at an end, that parliamentary democracy has ceased to operate?

'Increasingly, I fear not, for the other great development of modern times, very much reflected in much of what nowadays passes for news, is that we have for the most part lost any key to the past.'

In our family's large, nineteenth-century Bible, are explanatory notes to the Revelation. To put the second quote that I'll give from it, within its historical context, I'll first quote here the interpretation given of the preceding vial of the apocalypse (the sixth vial; Revelation 16:12) which is 'poured out... upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up...':

'The Euphrates is here used for “the empire founded by the Euphratean horsemen [the Turks] of the sixth trumpet,” and the drying up of its waters “to imply the exhaustion of all the political sources of wealth and power which contribute to the strength and greatness of... [that] empire...”'

The First World War is testimony to the final drying up of the Turkish empire. The devastation of 'The Great War' would also sound the final death knell of the Old Order throughout Europe. And its affects continue to reverberate still, today...

Of the seventh (and final) vial of the apocalypse, those Victorian expositors – with the wealth of centuries of biblical study behind them – would write:

'“The seventh angel poured out his vial into the air;” – this last of the seven plagues being poured into the air, denotes its wide extent, and seems to point to an European revolution more extensive and prodigious than any that has hitherto occurred.' (op. cit.)

In 1893, George Griffith wrote, 'The Angel of the Revolution'. A novel in which he imagined a world war fought with airships and submarines, and realised the tremendous potential for destruction inherent in the modern, technological revolution.

The 20th century would not only witness the revolution of air travel, for both good and ill; it would also witness a revolution in thoughts and ideas, which would be accelerated by the advent of the technology to transmit sound and pictures through the air – to be picked up and displayed on a little box in the corner of our rooms...

Today , in short fused irritation, I could hardly move fast enough to switch the TV over from the shallow mendacity of David Milliband on interview. Was I to consider myself intolerant and unprepared to listen to the other side of the argument ( EU constitution), or justified in my only practical response to the lies of the day, peddled by such second rate inadequates?
Brown, Balls, Milliband, Jacqui Smith, Hutton, etc., etc.,.. why should I continue to respect these people who repeatedly demonstrate that only a TV journalist or a fool can trust and respect them?
Thank you, Peter, for your recommendation to read "Quartered Safe Out Here" by the late George MacDonald Fraser (of "Flashman" fame), which, in its content and Epilogue, provide such a solid rejoinder to the massed ranks of the unworthy, spoilers, betrayers, and small time manipulators of politics and mass media of our time.
"Change and Decay", writes Fraser, short, pithy, and heartfelt, in a wonderful book about better people than those who now lead us and lie to us.

I do think your understanding of the world terrifically naive you know. News was always 'managed'. If things, standards, priorities, will never go back to the way they were it is precisely because those who run the world want us to know different things, less about different things and, more specifically, that what we do know comes to us shaped by particular biases. The same forces corrupt education, news management and anything else which raises the temperature of debate, rendering populations managable in direct proportion to the hysteria generated. Have you ever thought that it isn't the 'news' that changed, that - just possibly - it is your belated understanding of how it is put together that allowed the scales to fall from your eyes?

Guy, you continue with admirable consistency to talk nonsense, obfuscate and dodge the issue, which was not about how or why people choose to become addicts (as I repeatedly stated, no one is saying its not their own fault). Go back and re-read it. It was about the method of trying to solve the problem, eg prison, heroin clinics etc. That was the argument. Your "points" about George Orwell and the likes of Lou Reed have what, exactly, to do with this? I suspect you won't be responding again for the simple reason that you don't know what you're talking about.

Yes, its such a colossal issue when someone doesn't use their full name, isn't it? Certainly gives people something to concentrate on rather than engage with what they're actually saying, as you have. Not that it's important but I first posted as Steve B many months ago without giving it much thought and simply continue to do so for 2 main reasons, a) so that anyone who wants to look back over the comments sections to find any of my posts will be able to identify them, and b) because I want to. It's a total non-issue as far as I'm concerned and what matters is what we say here, not our usernames (incidentally Peter knows my surname as I've emailed him a couple of times).

With almost perfect timing for this weeks posting, both the BBC and ITV news on Friday carried the story of Vera Duckworth's death. For those who don't know, she is a character in the soap Coronation Street. While this may be important to those who watch the programme, it hardly counts as a news item, which was initially phrased as though a real person had passed away!
I also enjoyed the memories of the things Britain - and the world - have lost. I have experienced very few of them, though my parents and grandparents remember such things, but feel many of them should be restored for us, especially bus conductors and train carriages for "ladies only" to make us feel safer on the nightmare that is public transport, both night and day.

Peter
I don't where else to put this but I was astonished that no-one picked up on Nick Clegg's question to the Bliar successor which was "what measures were in place to assist the likely 45,000 people who would have their homes repossessed this year?". The successor (just cannot bear to name the man who stole my private pension!) did not answer the question but turned it around into a joke for the Commons to laugh at! This is no laughing matter, especially for those 45,000 people and Clegg tried to obtain an answer but none was forthcoming. Perhaps another angle for you to look at?

One source of sorrow is the foul language with which so many films are now full. This was not the case not so very long ago. My wife and I made the mistake of going to see "Charlie Wilson's War". Although rated a "15" it was full of the most appalling language. I suppose we were naive but it was so degrading to watch. We walked out. I see you had much praise for Amy Adams in "Enchanted". You might not find her so delightful if you viewed her in "Charlie Wilson's War". I do not recommend the film.

I just had a thought after my last posting - George Orwell - 'Down and out in Paris and London' - How come in all his down and out experiences in the 1930s he didn't meet with one junkie? It is a 1960s cultural thing, with it's own idiot Holy Trinity of William Burroughs/Keith Richards/Lou Reed - and don't tell me that Lou Reed, with his shades, his rock band, his Andy Warhol cover artwork was 'reflecting' heroin use, not glorifying it .

But don't worry Stevie B - the way is open for you to compose and post your ultimate knock down argument - I certainly won't ever be responding again - the reason? I am clearly identifying myself with my own name and 'Stevie B' could be anybody - it's a ridiculous situation.

Stevie B: Knowledge or understanding of getting yourself addicted to heroin - oh come on! I just chose not to take any, is all. Lots of cannabis, speed, mushrooms, LSD - all a waste of time, but the point is, it is not something anyone is impelled to do - they have to conciously seek out and associate with nasty people in sordid surroundings - and then they have to get themselves hooked.

Have you read the article I mentioned by the way? I advocate NOTHING but what I perceive to be the truth - so if I think David Icke has written a good article on Common Purpose, I say so - doesn't meant I advocate everything else he has written - as you are no doubt aware, I have read and admired a ton of George Orwell yet am not a socialist.

What is news? It's what the meeja decide they want you to know. If there's a catastrophe somewhere or other and it's not reported in the press or on the telly, then it ain't happened (except in the imediate vicinity). Similarly, if a politician has a very good policy which the meeja don't like then that won't be reported - except in a negative way, if at all - so the meeja determine what is "news". The big question is this - who pulls their strings?

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